1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic circuits and systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to cellular telephony.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many mobile telephones currently offer several configuration options, such as ringing style, vibration mode, and call forwarding. In certain locations, a user may habitually change the configuration settings of his or her telephone. For instance, upon entering a movie theatre, the ringer may be switched off and the vibration mode activated. Upon exiting the theatre, the user will have to remember to reactivate the ringer. If he visits the movie theatre often, he will frequently have to manually change the configurations of the telephone. A telephone which could remember the movie theatre location, and automatically deactivate the ringer upon entering that location (and reactivate it upon exiting), would alleviate this problem. Presently, however, mobile telephones do not have this capability.
Hence, a need exists in the art for a system designed to automatically configure features in a mobile telephone based on geographic location.
The need in the art is addressed by the present invention, which provides a system for automatically configuring a mobile telephone based on geographic location. In the illustrative embodiment, the invention includes a storing unit and an execution unit. The storing unit allows the user to save a particular location and the desired configurations corresponding to that location. The execution unit monitors the position of the telephone and, upon entering a saved location, executes the configurations corresponding to that location. The execution unit also returns the configurations to their previous settings after the telephone has exited from the saved location. In the preferred embodiment, the storing unit and the execution unit are implemented in software which is run on the microprocessor.